Nothing happened.
“Guess it doesn’t work that way,” she sighed, disappointed.
‘You have so much to learn, my dear Maria,’ Gramps had said the night before—the very weird night before.
Sherlock snored at the foot of Maria’s bed, undisturbed by the loud blare of the alarm. She rolled over and hit the snooze button.
Another day at the mall lay ahead of her.
“Magic or not, that popcorn ain’t gonna pop itself,” she said.
Sherlock twitched, his paws moving with whatever canine dream he was having.
Dream… Maybe I dreamt all of that last night? she wondered.
Then Sherlock’s voice filled her head. Are you going to stare at me all day while I sleep, or are you going to get up and fix us some breakfast? One eye opened.
Maria laughed. “Ah, wasn’t a dream.” She got out of bed, went into the bathroom, showered, brushed her teeth, and then got dressed. She noticed in the mirror that she looked a bit different. Her hair seemed darker, shinier. Her body was more curvy, yet tight with muscle. She flexed. Her bicep didn’t bulge like a female bodybuilder’s, but it was there, visible.
“I never work out with the weights, only hit the boxing bag. This must be…magic,” she laughed at her own joke. Then she stopped. “I’ve gotta quit talking to myself.”
Get out of the bathroom and talk to me, Sherlock suggested. Over some leftover cake…like you promised.
“I’ve also got to stop talking to my dog,” she contended. “People are going to think I’m crazy.”
After she was done admiring her look in the mirror, she went downstairs to the smell of bacon and eggs. Gramps was already up. Like most people in the twilight of their life, he woke at the crack of dawn. He sat near the stove, a spatula in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
“Morning, Maria,” he said, not looking up from the paper. There was a look of concern on his face. He wore a more-wrinkled-than-usual brow, and squinted eyes.
“Morning, Gramps,” she said.
“Sleep all right?”
“Weird dreams. Not to mention Sherlock here kept kicking me.”
Sherlock sat near the refrigerator, waiting for the cake.
“I’m going to give him some cake for breakfast,” Maria said, almost as if she needed permission. Sherlock was her dog, after all. She didn’t need permission to feed him junk. And now that she could understand him and communicate with him, she thought of him as more than the family canine. He was now cemented as an eternal friend.
“Sure, sure,” Gramps said. “It’s his funeral.”
Sherlock growled at Gramps and threw him a nasty glance. Bacon isn’t much better. Talk about clogging the arteries.
“He says bacon isn’t good for you, either,” Maria said.
“Oh, well, it’s my funeral,” Gramps said absently. “You work today?”
“Wouldn’t be up this early if I didn’t. Another day in hell to look forward to.”
Gramps’s face turned serious. “Maria, you mustn’t let anyone know about your abilities. They are going to keep coming, and coming fast, taking you by surprise. You must be prepared for that. But we don’t want the Silver Griffins to be suspicious. It’s best we handle this situation on our own. They could get in the way of what we have to do.”
“What do we have to do?” Maria wanted to know.
“We have to go to Oriceran. We have to teach you the ways of magic. We have to open a way into the world in between.”
“All while not getting killed or losing the music box to this giant spider-man, right?”
“Him, I’m not worried about. He won’t strike the house again, now that he knows we know he’s after us.”
“How does he know?”
“You fled and he followed you, I’m sure.”
Maria shivered with the thought of a giant spider chasing her through the dark streets of Akron while she pedaled her girly bicycle.
“If he wanted to get into the house, he would’ve. But he must’ve sensed that the music box was gone.”
Maria needed to sit down. “Wow,” she said. “I was this close to being killed by an alien.”
You’re going to be killed by a dog if you don’t feed me soon, Sherlock growled.
The refrigerator’s door opened, and the cake fell to the floor. Nobody had touched the fridge or the cake. It just moved on its own.
Gramps smirked. “Oughta shut him up for a few hours. Two minutes of gobbling the cake down, and then a two hour food-coma nap.”
“Will I be able to do stuff like that? You know, move stuff with my mind?”
“I believe you will be able to do so much more than that, Maria. You are of a special kind. Your mother would be proud.”
That was an odd sentiment. Maria had never known her mother, but the thought of actually meeting her someday had crossed her mind, only it was in the afterlife.
Still, Maria, there’s plenty of people who are not dead. People you can save. People you have to save.
“It looks like our friend Malakai isn’t being as careful as I thought he’d be,” Gramps ascertained. He handed the newspaper to Maria, and she read the small headline in the community section.
LOCAL BUSINESS OWNER SPOTS GIANT SPIDER.
Beneath it was a short article about the number of calls flooding the Akron Police Department, all of them reporting sightings of the same giant spider. The sightings were always at night and, though the descriptions were sometimes off, one thing remained true throughout…the people who’d seen it reported glowing red eyes.
“Ew, I don’t want to read that,” Maria said, pushing the newspaper away.
“It’s important. Malakai is no fool. Dead or not, he’s dangerous. He knows people have seen him in his true form. In order to prevent future instances, he’ll use a cloaking spell to disguise himself. He could be anyone. He could even be me…” Gramps said.
Maria eyed him. “Don’t, Gramps,” she said firmly.
“I’m just warning you. You must be cautious. Agnes, Salem, and the Muffler twins will look out for you, but we can’t be there to hold your hand every step of the way.”
“I wouldn’t want you to. I’m
